Touching the Void
Full Price Feature
You know a film is a staggering achievement in storytelling and building dramatic tension when the real-life participants are narrating it after the fact and you still don't, can't believe that they could possibly survive their ordeal. Touching the Void is simply astounding in this capacity. It's a dazzling dance of hubris and the will to survive.
In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates attempted to climb the 21,000 foot Siula Grande west face in Peru. Even when things are going well for these fellows, it was a gripping tale, and it was difficult to see the appeal of such an arduous and dangerous hobby. They are climbing sheer walls of slippery snow in sub-freezing winds, stretching their physical limits thousands of miles from any hope of aid should anything go wrong. Before long, things do indeed go terribly, terribly wrong, most of all for Joe (who also wrote a book about this event). Taking turns, Simon and Joe narrate their tale, while the story is re-enacted by Nicholas Aaron as Simon and Brendan Mackey as Joe.
At first it seemed a little cheesy to show other men assaulting the snowy rock face, while these men sit in a warmly lit studio, earnestly and eloquently telling their story to the camera. Once the men become separated on the mountain, however, the re-enactment becomes more real, more necessary. I am certain if I sat in a pub listening to Joe relate his adventure, I would never believe it to see him present and speaking so calmly. But Mackey's performance was what tipped the scales for me from dubious listener to wide-eyed, perspiring witness to the harrowing events.
Eventually even with that empathetic assist, I pulled out of the story, too horrified at each new turn; it was here I began to wonder, how the heck did they shoot this re-enactment? I saw the Imax Everest movie, which was nerve-wracking indeed. Siula Grande has never been successfully climbed; Everest practically has a Starbucks midway up. The credits indicate that this was shot on location in the Alps and in Peru, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how the re-enactment crew survived this insane mountain (even the stand-in mountain).
Occasionally we get a stunning shot of the snow swirling like smoke from the jagged tips of the rocks, the meringue curlicues of snow overhanging cold blue shadows in the thin air. Mike Eley and Keith Partridge were the cinematographers for this HD video movie, and they capture the beauty and the deadliness of this place. My companions and I were thinking, "why would you do such a thing," and then finally, "how could you survive such a thing?" It will knock the wind out of you.
Director Kevin MacDonald's filmography is filled with biopic type works, and he knows when to sit back and let the story tell itself; Joe Simpson's beautifully composed narration and quiet expression sometimes say more than the ice-encrusted man playing his role, but sometimes we need to feel the terror that he felt, see the obstacles they tackled, or sense the depth of the crevasse, and MacDonald cuts to Mackey and Aaron. He balances all the elements of the story with finesse and sensitivity.
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These reviews (c) 2004 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at:
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An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark -- that is a critical genius. -Billy Wilder
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